A Daughter of the Snows eBook

Things went on after that as though nothing had happened;
St. Vincent gave Bella a wide berth and seemed to
have forgotten her existence. But the Swedes
went back to their end of the island, laughing at the
trivial happening which was destined to be significant.

CHAPTER XXIII

Spring, smiting with soft, warm hands, had come like
a miracle, and now lingered for a dreamy spell before
bursting into full-blown summer. The snow had
left the bottoms and valleys and nestled only on the
north slopes of the ice-scarred ridges. The
glacial drip was already in evidence, and every creek
in roaring spate. Each day the sun rose earlier
and stayed later. It was now chill day by three
o’clock and mellow twilight at nine. Soon
a golden circle would be drawn around the sky, and
deep midnight become bright as high noon. The
willows and aspens had long since budded, and were
now decking themselves in liveries of fresh young
green, and the sap was rising in the pines.

Mother nature had heaved her waking sigh and gone
about her brief business. Crickets sang of nights
in the stilly cabins, and in the sunshine mosquitoes
crept from out hollow logs and snug crevices among
the rocks,—­big, noisy, harmless fellows,
that had procreated the year gone, lain frozen through
the winter, and were now rejuvenated to buzz through
swift senility to second death. All sorts of
creeping, crawling, fluttering life came forth from
the warming earth and hastened to mature, reproduce,
and cease. Just a breath of balmy air, and then
the long cold frost again—­ah! they knew
it well and lost no time. Sand martins were
driving their ancient tunnels into the soft clay banks,
and robins singing on the spruce-garbed islands.
Overhead the woodpecker knocked insistently, and
in the forest depths the partridge boom-boomed and
strutted in virile glory.

But in all this nervous haste the Yukon took no part.
For many a thousand miles it lay cold, unsmiling,
dead. Wild fowl, driving up from the south in
wind-jamming wedges, halted, looked vainly for open
water, and quested dauntlessly on into the north.
From bank to bank stretched the savage ice.
Here and there the water burst through and flooded
over, but in the chill nights froze solidly as ever.
Tradition has it that of old time the Yukon lay unbroken
through three long summers, and on the face of it
there be traditions less easy of belief.

So summer waited for open water, and the tardy Yukon
took to stretching of days and cracking its stiff
joints. Now an air-hole ate into the ice, and
ate and ate; or a fissure formed, and grew, and failed
to freeze again. Then the ice ripped from the
shore and uprose bodily a yard. But still the
river was loth to loose its grip. It was a slow
travail, and man, used to nursing nature with pigmy
skill, able to burst waterspouts and harness waterfalls,
could avail nothing against the billions of frigid
tons which refused to run down the hill to Bering
Sea.